2024 in review as a professional outdoor writer and editor

In 2023, my wife Hannah and I moved back to Scotland, which means that 2024 has been our first full year north of the border. So how has that been? And what have been my challenges and successes in 2024 as a working writer and editor?

In these reviews I tend to focus on the outdoors, photography, work, and areas for change in the year ahead. I'll take a look at each in turn. I've been doing these since 2015 now; you can browse the archive from previous years here.

This is a long post with a lot of pictures. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy, or at least find it interesting!

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Outdoors

Like 2023, this year has been all about making the most of adventure opportunities here in Scotland. Last year I wrote 'I don't consider myself a Munro-bagger', but I think it's time to drop the pretence: most of my trips here in Scotland are based around outings to clusters of Munros. And that's fine! I'm not a slave to the list, but it does provide a useful framework for getting out and about, seeing some of this fine country. I've also made many return visits to favourite summits – and have spent a bit more time in bothies this year, both solo and social.

So, numbers. I no longer bother to record metrics such as distance hiked or metres climbed, but I do log my summits. I climbed 18 new Munros in 2024, bringing my total up to 118. Hannah joined me on several of these outings, and her confidence as a hillwalker is really increasing. Hannah and I have also been out and about for countless low-level walks, mostly focusing on woodlands or lower hills.

Let's take a look at some highlights from each season.

Winter

I've already written about some of the highlights of my winter in my post 'Highs and lows from a winter of outdoor gear testing: spooky summit camps, exploding stoves, and more', including photos. Yep, 2023/24 was a great winter for me, testing a bunch of kit for TGO including tents, down jackets and ice axes. I saw some breathtaking conditions. Here are a few photos I haven't shared on this blog yet.

Spring

Highlights of spring included a splendid summit camp on Ben Vrackie (see 'Perthshire, March, Kodak cine film' for more), a wintry crossing of the Tarmachan Ridge with my brother James and his partner Nicole, an exploratory tramp out to Ben Alder Cottage, and plenty of time in my local Sidlaw hills.

I also started spending a lot more time on my bike. Nothing impressive or special – just regular mileage in the local countryside. This year I've started to use my bike as a way to access local hills too, which is opening up new adventure possibilities.

Summer

Summer began with my only long-distance trail for 2024: the phenomenal Toubkal Circuit in Morocco. I shared some images from this trail in 'Postcards from Morocco', and I have a feature for TGO to write up about it some point over the next few weeks. Can't wait to share more thoughts from this very special trip. Here are a few photos I haven't posted here yet.

Other highlights over the summer include various weekend hillwalks with Hannah, solo trips into the southern Cairngorms, and a weekend of scrambling up in Gairloch and Torridon with James and Nicole. Yes, there were midges.

Autumn

This year's autumn was less good for vivid autumn colours than 2023 – due, I think, to a number of gales that passed through and ripped away the leaves. It was nice while it lasted, though! Hannah and I went on holiday to Balmaha this year, and did a bit of hillwalking in very nice weather. Other autumn highlights included an ascent of the Glen Clova Munros as well as woodland photography in a number of favourite local spots.

Autumn also featured the OWPG Big Weekend 2024, including an enjoyable walk over the Long Mynd. It was a pleasure to chat with long-standing member David Ramshaw, who sadly passed away on Christmas Eve.

Winter

A highlight of early winter was a trip to the Lake District for the Kendal Mountain Festival, which started off with a great outing to Mosedale Cottage bothy with Andy Wasley, Juls Stodel, and other friends.

I didn't manage to get out for any pre-New Year winter mountaineering trips, sadly... although 2025 has started well!

Photography

I haven't yet carried out my yearly task of selecting my top five images, but it's been another strong year for my photography. Like 2023, it's also been another year of leaning in to analogue work and away from digital. Most of my equipment dates from the 1940s and 1950s, and I love studying the method and craft of the mid-century masters to get the most out of this equipment.

My 35mm cameras of choice remain my Leica IIIc (1948) and M3 (1958) along with period-correct lenses. I favour the focal lengths of 35mm and 50mm. This year I found myself gravitating towards the 35mm focal length a bit more often than I used to, especially for everyday photography. 50mm remains my default, though – this year I've taken 1.5x as many images with a 50mm lens as with a 35mm.

However, especially in questionable weather, I've been reaching for my modern Voigtländer lenses a bit more often than my vintage Leitz lenses in recent months (they handle better with gloves, and they have more useful lens hoods for hill use). My Voigtländer lenses are also faster, which can be useful in low light. The resulting images do look very different, though – harder, more saturated, more digital.

Last year, I wrote: 'When it comes to buying fresh film I'm going to try to stick to Kodak Vision3 250D cine film for colour and Ilford XP2 and HP5 for black and white, though.' Yeah, that went out of the window soon enough. I enjoy experimenting with different film stocks too much. Although I've shot plenty of cine film, as well as Ilford XP2 and HP5+ this year, I've also shot (and bought) Washi X, Fujifilm 200, Kodak Gold, Kodak Portra, Kodak Tri-X, Fomapan Classic 100, and Kentmere 400.

Film, for me, is now simply photography. I don't have to go through mental gymnastics to figure out whether a particular outing, or picture, 'justifies' film. I simply use film to take pictures in my everyday life – and also for publication. Film is now the default for me (see below for digital exceptions) because for me it is simply better. The process is all, and slowing down, engaging and caring more, is exactly the point. It is better precisely because it demands more from me – and therefore gives more back in return.

So much for process. What about the results? I've had dozens of analogue photos published this year, and editors simply do not care that the images were created using cameras from 60+ years ago. As long as the picture looks good and is high enough resolution to print, it's fine.

However, 'as long as the picture looks good' is the important bit. And this is why I think that analogue photographers who work professionally must take charge of the scanning process, because as editor of Sidetracked magazine I see so many photographers sending in poor-quality scans. The lab does not always know best.

I've also been learning more about flash photography. Because my equipment mostly dates from before electronic flash was common, and long before automatic flash was even invented, I've been learning the old-school way: guide numbers, exposure tables, and distance to subject. My Leica IIIc doesn't even have built-in flash synchronisation, which means you have to use an add-on synchroniser (my synchroniser of choice is a Geiss Kontakt from the late 1930s). It works fine and is pretty straightforward once you get used to it.

2024 has also been a year of stepping into medium-format photography. The Agfa Record III (manufactured 1950) has already earned its place as a favourite tool. It's slow, expensive to use (eight shots per roll!), and it must be used intentionally and methodically. But it also has unique advantages: incredible image quality rivalling full-frame digital, a very nice lens, an accurate rangefinder, and the whole thing folds down to fit into your pocket!

The camera is also in stunning, as-new condition. Although I use it on a tripod most of the time, in good light and with fast film it can be shot handheld. I LOVE the distinctive red bellows.

I prefer to use it with an auxiliary shoe-mounted viewfinder. It's pictured below with the Leitz VIOOH, but more recently I've been using it with a 50mm viewfinder, which is close enough to the camera's field of view.

The images are absolutely spellbinding. I never could have believed that raw image quality this good was possible from analogue film.

That said, I do still use digital cameras! If I need images right away, if conditions will be too severe for my film cameras, if I'm travelling abroad (film gets zapped by airport scanners), or if the assignment is too valuable to run the risk of lost/damaged negatives (rare but it could theoretically happen), then I'll shoot digital. This year, even though I promised myself I wouldn't upgrade my digital camera system again, I found myself swapping out my Nikon Z5 for the Zf. This thing is the sweet spot for me: I can set it up to work almost exactly like my film cameras, but it has the durability and capabilities I require for work purposes. I use it with three lenses: Voigtländer 50mm and 35mm f/2 manual primes (which I used in Morocco), and the Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 (my bombproof winter mountain lens). I also have an adapter that allows the Zf to be used with my vintage manual Pentax lenses.

I usually prefer to use the Nikon in deep winter, because winter involves conditions that would simply destroy my irreplaceable vintage film cameras. The Zf is a tank. It can be soaked, frozen, plated in ice, and it'll just keep on working.

Another digital camera I've picked up this year is the OM Tough TG-7 – a tough, waterproof compact camera. I bought this because I want to stop taking photos with my phone (I hate the smartphone photo aesthetic) but it's still useful to have a pocket digital camera. The TG-7, despite having a tiny sensor, has proven surprisingly capable. It can take photos underwater, it has a very useful macro mode, and it's great for the kind of throwaway snaps I used to use my phone for. Image quality at low ISOs when shot in raw is good enough for publication – and the images look far better, to my eyes anyway, than phone shots. I often carry this camera on runs, bike rides or hikes when I can't be bothered to bring along a bigger camera, or if I'm worried about damaging a delicate vintage film camera.

Work

At the end of last year, I wrote:

Sidetracked and TGO continue to be the main magazines I work with. Both are doing well and have exciting plans ahead, but it has not been an easy year. At various points I've found myself pondering if I need to tweak my strategy again. However, given the chaos and disruption elsewhere in the industry, I'm well aware how lucky I am to have stable work with titles I believe in.

In 2024, I did indeed end up tweaking my strategy, but not by much. Overall it's been an exciting year with some new opportunities unfolding – although the industry remains in a challenging position overall.

This year I've sensed a shift in how people perceive print media. It's getting just a little bit radical. If you're picking up a print magazine in the year 2024, you're making a statement – a political statement – about how you intend to spend your time and direct your attention. We live in a technofeudalist attention economy in which giant corporations try to dominate your entire being and convert it into shareholder value. If you're reading a magazine, you're taking time away from screens – and you're choosing to engage with depth and quality rather than skimming over the infinite shallow surface of the internet. You're choosing to cultivate your inner life rather than participate in the nihilistic collective oblivion of cyberspace. As I wrote in my blog post about Sidetracked Volume 31:

As the internet dissolves into low-quality mush, all it really takes to get something better is to switch off the screens and invest a little time and money in something beautiful made by real adventurers, explorers, writers, photographers, editors and designers. Humans doing human stuff. More and more people are remembering that you can't get everything you need from the internet. All the good stuff is out here in the real world anyway.

I've picked my side. I choose materiality over immateriality, humanity over machine-thinking, quality over speed, physical media over the ephemeral trivia of the web, meatspace over cyberspace. I choose meaning over control. I didn't see it at the end of 2023, but I see it now: to pour all your working energy into print magazines and books is to engage in a countercultural act. I think a lot of other people are starting to get this too. I've had so many conversations along these lines now, with so many different people, that I'm sensing a real shift in the wind.

I'm thrilled that Sidetracked and Like the Wind (more on this below), two of my main magazine clients, are leading this charge. More and more of our contributors are choosing to send in analogue photographs as well as – or instead of – digital. As I write this, I've just finished penning a profile piece on a Brazilian professional photographer who chooses to shoot marathons on 35mm film. Slowly but surely, analogue counterculture is seeping into outdoors media.

This year I've become involved with the Aline Collective, a group of outdoor creatives working for mutual support in the industry. It's early days yet, but we've had lots of interest, and it's our hope that we can help break down a few barriers.

Writing

Another year of writing many pieces of work for The Great Outdoors: gear reviews, mapped Wild Walks, features, and skills columns. TGO has been through some changes again this year, but I think it's in a great place now, and I'm particularly glad to be working with an expanded gear-testing team. Having both a male and female perspective on every category of gear, not just 'women-specific gear', sounds like such a small thing but it's a step in the right direction.

It's no secret that gear testing does not pay well, but it remains a privilege to do this work – and TGO is one of the last titles of its kind in print still doing this kind of thorough, totally unbiased real-world testing. It also provides an excellent excuse to plan hill trips.

As I move into my tenth year of writing for this superb title, it remains one of the greatest privileges of my career to be a regular contributor.

I've also had a piece published in Outdoor Magazin, but this year I have not written or published any books. To be honest I haven't really had time. I have, however, had encouraging conversations with a publisher about a new book idea that's currently in an early stage. Watch this space.

What about my existing books? To be frank about the money side of things, royalties from my back catalogue currently make up about 20% of my overall income, but that's slowly declining from year to year – and I have experienced major problems getting one of my publishers to pay the money owed to me in a timely fashion. This isn't an unusual story in the publishing world at the moment, so it wouldn't be fair of me to point fingers.

Editing

Sidetracked remains my main client, and much of my time each week is spent working with the best team in adventure media, selecting stories and then refining them for the page. Sidetracked celebrated its 10th birthday this year (a milestone I reflected on here), and then we produced Volume 31 – another banger.

I love this work, I truly do. There's little more satisfying for me than working with a writer to help them say what they truly want to say, blowing gently on the ember of a story until it flutters into delicate life. My Sidetracked colleagues call this process 'Alexing'.

Although a lot of this work is a deeply personal and analogue process that happens somewhere in my own brain, let's not fall into the trap of thinking that this is all about me, or some kind of ineffable magic. It depends on a team. On a daily basis, the person I work most closely with is Emily Woodhouse, our eagle-eyed sub-editor.

We work well together and have often collaborated on various projects over the years. In 2024, Emily and I also started working at Like the Wind, an independent running magazine. Essentially we do the same jobs as we do at Sidetracked, and have moved much of our workflow across, adapting it to the new publication's needs. It's felt like a really natural fit.

LtW has proven to be a fantastic creative challenge and one that I'm truly enjoying; it feels just far enough away from the world of outdoors media to be fresh, but it's still very much about adventure storytelling, when you get down to it. LtW's tagline is 'It's why we run.'

Funnily enough, LtW is also heavily leaning into the world of analogue counterculture. I've found my people. It feels good to know that the work keeping a roof over my head is also aligned with my personal principles.

Finally on the editing front, I edited several issues of Outdoor Focus for the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, but sadly found that I simply didn't have capacity for this voluntary post on top of all my professional commitments. I passed the role on to David Jordan.

Speaking

In June, Sidetracked crew, readers, fans, family and friends got together in Cornwall for our very first festival! Along with my lovely colleagues Jenny Tough, Emily Woodhouse and Daniel Neilson, I helped to run a series of writing workshops, helping to demystify adventure writing.

In November, I helped to run a Kendal Mountain Festival fringe event with the Aline Collective. More on how this went here.

Finally, I delivered a talk on my winter Cape Wrath Trail (and book The Farthest Shore) to a fantastic audience at the Dundee Mountain Festival in December. Read more here.

Areas for change in 2025

Personal

After months of deliberation, I've finally made up my mind about what to do with Instagram. Although I won't go into the whys and wherefores here, I'm done with the social network and will no longer be actively using it. Put simply, it has a malign effect on me personally and I believe it's having a malign effect on society at large – including the adventure community. Also, I simply don't need it!

This is part of an overall drive to simply spend less time online. I've been reading more books and magazines in 2024, and I want this trend to continue in 2025. I've repurposed a Kindle to read blog posts. My ideal? Completely eliminating passive online reading and scrolling. I want all the reading I do to be deep and intentional. This doesn't mean only reading print material, but it does mean getting away from the web's numbing influence. If I'm reading an online article, I don't want to be reading it on an internet-connected modern multitasking computer – a place perfectly tuned to scatter attention and destroy focus. I'll transfer it to a Kindle or print it out. Again, rejecting convenience is the point. Something worth reading is worth a tiny bit of effort, don't you think?

As I spend less time online, I'm putting more effort into in-person community. This means meeting up with friends in the real world as well as getting more involved with local groups. Hannah and I have joined the Forfar & District Hill Walking Club, and I'll also be joining a local photographic group.

The outdoors

I want to develop my cycling and running a bit more in 2025. My running has been ticking over at a low simmer for the last year, but I'd love to do more adventures combining running and cycling. More on how I've started to do this here.

In addition to my usual adventures in the Scottish hills, I'd like to do at least one international trip, but have yet to make firm plans.

Photography

2023 was the year when I started scanning my own film to bring costs down, and in 2024 I upgraded and refined my scanning setup; my new rig can handle both 35mm and medium format, and with much better image quality and colour consistency than before. In 2025 I plan to learn how to develop my own film. Although lab costs aren't too bad once you're handling the scanning side yourself (scanning is the expensive bit), I can still bring overall costs down considerably by developing myself at home. And it'll be much quicker, too.

More importantly, developing my own film will give me more control over the entire process, and will make my workflow self-sufficient (apart from buying the film and chemicals, of course). This appeals to me.

I'll continue to refine my photographic eye and am thinking about personal projects to get engaged with.

Work

The stage is set for 2025: between Sidetracked and Like the Wind, most of my working hours are now accounted for. I'll still be writing and testing gear for TGO, though, and have several commissions lined up – as well as exciting opportunities elsewhere I can't go public about yet. Otherwise, I feel very fortunate that I no longer have to chase as many commissions. I'll keep working on this book idea, and am going to be looking for a publisher for it. Despite my gripes and moans about traditional publishing, I don't have the time or temperament for self-publishing any more – much as I support it as a great choice for many other writers.

Thanks for reading. Here's to a happy, balanced and intentional 2025.

If you’d like to support my writing and photography, you can buy me a coffee. Thank you!

Header image © James Roddie; all other images © Alex Roddie unless otherwise credited. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce these images without permission.